Why the SimCity beta nonsense should be a reminder to backup your Steam games

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Back on this again are we? Yes it's probably a good idea to have some kind of contingency plan. Maybe one of these online services bans you, or goes bankrupt, or maybe you just plumb run out of Internet. As it's been said though, backing up files will only get you so far. The best defence against losing games on online services is to avoid those services altogether, though that would mean missing out on a hell of a lot of games, as well as the perks and convenience offered by Steam.

Frankly I wish people would put a little less stock in convenience. Convenience is nice, but I value my rights and privacy a bit more.

I think games that are also available non-origin (Dead Space 2 for example) are bootable even without Origin open. For example, I bought and downloaded DS2 on Origin, but I am free to launch it with Origin shut.

Perhaps. Though as far as I'm aware there's not been a single successful prosecution ever for someone 'pirating' a copy of something they already provably 'bought'.

Originally Posted by vinraith

Honestly, I think a few major download services need to go down for a little while, just to remind people how truly tenuous their control of "their" games really is.

It's happened, The Pirate Bay has gone down a few times, generally only for a day or so at a time, but still, that's the biggest PC games download service in the world.

The last thing worth noting is the difference between Steam and EA here. They both have a clause in their contracts that say "we can terminate your account for any reason we want whenever we want to". That's the silly thing. That thing about not reporting bugs didn't need to be in there at all because they can do that anyway. The language wasn't too broad, the broad case is already covered, the language was too narrow which implies it's something they might actually do.

On the other hand, Steam are actually taking positive steps. While they also reserve the right to ban you forever for any reason, they've also stopped banning accounts for anything but obvious fraud of Steam itself. In cases where users have actually handed over money, they now only ever 'lock' accounts. That stops them buying, trading or doing anything with their Steam accounts except for patching and playing games they've already bought.

Back on this again are we? Yes it's probably a good idea to have some kind of contingency plan. Maybe one of these online services bans you, or goes bankrupt, or maybe you just plumb run out of Internet. As it's been said though, backing up files will only get you so far. The best defence against losing games on online services is to avoid those services altogether, though that would mean missing out on a hell of a lot of games, as well as the perks and convenience offered by Steam.

Frankly I wish people would put a little less stock in convenience. Convenience is nice, but I value my rights and privacy a bit more.

Convenience and rights and privacy are 3 completely different things - you can easily have all 3.

The concept of an online 'library' of your content is a good concept but there's always the risk the library closes (or you find yourself unable to access it) - it's a trade-off of high convenience now against a risk of some inconvenience (potentially very little) later.

I mean someone could setup the "Absolute Forever Online Game Store" and guarantee your games and saves are stored online forever - based in a bunker in Svalbard, beyond earthquakes and wars - but it's costly. You have to pay a chunk of cash every month and you have to keep paying it or your stuff gets wiped - I suspect that wouldn't be as popular as it would need to be??

Any product without a cost (as the Steam service/client/Steamworks stuff is to you, the player) means that it's not a product - YOU are the product :)

Given that the list includes a large number of last few years better titles I'm failing to see the positives in what your saying.

Does that list include every good game of the last few years like you were suggesting before? Backtracking away!

Originally Posted by Kadayi

Some of them? So you're saying that people should be happy if they get perm banned by Valve that some of their games that they chose not to buy through Steam potentially might run? Yeah that makes a lot of sense.

Oh hey there strawman. I missed you too.

Originally Posted by Kadayi

Yes, because Steam offline mode is so famously reliable.

Does Origin even have an offline mode? I still complain about Steam's offline mode being wonky. But the fact that it's there and they should support it if I call them on it is more than someone else offers.

Originally Posted by Kadayi

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck, or in your case a complete Valve fan boy.

What if it looks like a poor desparte little kid who can't form a coherent argument and has to fall back on the "Well you're a fanboy! So there!" cop-out, acts like like a poor desperate little kid who can't form a coherent argument and has to fall back on the "Well you're a fanboy! So there!" cop-out, and posts like a poor desperate little kid who can't form a coherent argument and has to fall back on the "Well you're a fanboy! So there!" cop-out?

Originally Posted by Poor desperate little kid

Still free to blather on more about how 'bad' EA are (even though no ones actually been banned as a result of that EULA), because that totally makes Valves EULA any less questionable.

Yes, you can potentially be banned from any service for any reason at any time.
In practice, you won't be. Why? Bad publicity. Those EULAs are super vague because it is covering asses. People freak out when a new EULA must be accepted, so you go vague. You can always choose to not enforce an EULA, but you have to make sure that your actions fall under the vague "not really a law" banner.

But let's consider the cases that are often cited of being unfairly banned:
Exploiting a bug/glitch: In all popular cases where this has occurred (Guild Wars 2 being the most recent), the "normal everyday person who innocently used an exploit" is not harmed. At all. It is the people who actively abuse it. Yes, there is a question of "What counts as abuse?", but I don't think anyone has ever really been on the threshold of "If I had just raped one less smurf, people would laugh it off"
Horrifying behavior: Around the launch of Battlefield 3, people were banned from BF3 (was it Origin/all of EA, or just BF3?) for filling the forums with hatespeech and vitriol. Something similar happened with Mass Effect 3. Honestly, can any of you say that you want to play with the people who scream things like "I <forcefully had sex with> your mom you <derogatory term for a person of african descent>"? Seriously, can you, with a straight face, say that you want to play with those people in multiplayer games? If people can be banned for cheating and hacking, why not for making the world a worse place?
Quoting said horrifying behavior: There was one case that WAS brought up in which someone was wrongfully banned because they quoted a (relatively) tame post on Battlelog, and I think even EA admitted that was a screw-up and fixed his account after it was properly brought to their attention.
Being "wrongfully banned" for somethign trivial: In almost every case (I would say every case, but I am sure there is an exception), after the news media freaked out over how wrongful it was, evidence came to light that they were banned for something else entirely.

Again, it is in a company's best interest to not wrongfully ban people. You aren't special, they aren't going to make an example out of you for having a spray tag of copyrighted Hello Kitty.

As far as "What if the service goes down?"
Honestly, I don't see that as a problem in most cases. As long as you stick to titles on the major services (Steam and POSSIBLY Origin, although I am not sure if I trust EA in the long-run) you don't have to worry. Because by the time those companies go out of business, odds are your games wouldn't work anyway due to lack of backwards compatibility across four generations of an OS. And even if it does, piracy is always an option.
That being said, for the smaller sites (like GoG), I do strongly suggest backing up your downloads if you refuse to be a pirate or just like the convenience (I re-buy games on GoG because it is so convenient to install and play).

Steam: Gundato
PSN: Gundato
If you want me on either service, I suggest PMing me here first to let me know who you are.

On the other hand, Steam are actually taking positive steps. While they also reserve the right to ban you forever for any reason, they've also stopped banning accounts for anything but obvious fraud of Steam itself. In cases where users have actually handed over money, they now only ever 'lock' accounts. That stops them buying, trading or doing anything with their Steam accounts except for patching and playing games they've already bought.

That's fine, but what I think some people like to point out is that there's still the potential for it to happen, and if it was any other company that would be enough to condemn them. Think about how people went batshit over the "Origin will spy on me!" thing when there was zero indication that it was doing anything malicious. Despite that it was enough for people to act like it was a real threat.

If we're going to pick about EULAs then we should be holding everyone to the same standard. You're absolutely right that just because something is in the EULA it doesn't necessarily mean that it will be enforced, but that doesn't always mean it should be disregarded.

Is cracking my steam backups for offline use something I could practically do on my own as a skilled computer user and intermediate programmer with no hacking/pirating experience to speak of? What would be the, legally speaking, safest way to do such a thing in the event of a Steam meltdown or ban?

I ask primarily because I'm not sure how practical and balanced a suggestion you're making by instructing people to backup, in some cases, dozens of games and repeat the process across major game updates and bug-fixes in the hopes that they'll be able to crack it open later without having to resort to full-game piracy.

That said, I'd recommend backups for other reasons. Any game bigger than 1GB that you remove and then reinstall frequently is a great candidate for backup. A lot of ISPs charge you extra when your data rates go up to a certain level over a short period, and I found out the hard way (and saved myself some cash by pointing out that the policy was, in my case, utterly unadvertised even in fine print) that installing a chunk of my steam collection over a few days while regular household usage continues (including other downloads, online play, video streaming, etc from multiple users) after a full-system meltdown and reformatting is an excellent way to hit those caps.

Last edited by gwathdring; 23-01-2013 at 03:09 AM.

I think of [the Internet] as a grisly raw steak laid out on a porcelain benchtop in the sun, covered in chocolate hazelnut sauce. In the background plays Stardustís Music Sounds Better With You. Thereís lots of fog. --tomeoftom

I've only bought maybe 5 or 6 games at full price in a digital format, for these very reasons. If my Steam library were to disappear, I'd be very annoyed at the loss of the games themselves, but at least I wouldn't feel robbed of thousands of pounds.

Apropos of nothing, I recognize people on this forum largely by their avatars, and this "Vinraith in a jar" thing is throwing me for a loop.

:D
characters for the post god

I think of [the Internet] as a grisly raw steak laid out on a porcelain benchtop in the sun, covered in chocolate hazelnut sauce. In the background plays Stardustís Music Sounds Better With You. Thereís lots of fog. --tomeoftom

If we're going to pick about EULAs then we should be holding everyone to the same standard. You're absolutely right that just because something is in the EULA it doesn't necessarily mean that it will be enforced, but that doesn't always mean it should be disregarded.

Yes. But what someone fails/totally ignores is I'm not putting up a double standard. I'm going by the facts.

I see nothing forbidding me from making backups of all the games I bought from Steam, in fact I see information on how to actually do it. It's not the ideal solution, it most certainly could be better. I never said it couldn't and that was the best we could get.

I still make it a habit to look everywhere else for a game DRM-free before settling with Steam or unless they've put a deep enough discount on it that even if it did self-destruct I wouldn't feel swindled.

I chew out EA because they've gone and actually made good on dumb threats, making ridiculous rules in their agreements like forum ban = no games for you and enforcing them. Saying one evil is the lesser of two is not a double standard. Not unless you want to mangle context to the point of nonrecognition.

The potential to be horrible ≠ being horrible. When Valve plans/does something horrible then I'll chew them out too.

Originally Posted by Nalano

Apropos of nothing, I recognize people on this forum largely by their avatars, and this "Vinraith in a jar" thing is throwing me for a loop.

I see nothing forbidding me from making backups of all the games I bought from Steam...

Where did I criticise that?

Originally Posted by Shooop

Saying one evil is the lesser of two is not a double standard.

Except by and large people threw a fit over things before EA had a chance to be evil. The "double standard" is not "Valve is less evil than EA" but "Valve is god, EA is the devil, now and forever." The forum ban = account ban was a stupid issue and EA copped a lot of flak for it, as they so richly deserved. But that wasn't the point I was making. People are pulling out parts of EULAs and turning them into big, scary monsters but only when they dislike the company. So much of this stuff is practically boilerplate that if we're going to disagree with its implementation then it should apply to everybody. Even Valve.

Originally Posted by Shooop

The potential to be horrible ≠ being horrible.

Why should they have the potential? I ask you - what breach of a EULA should be significant enough to prohibit a person from playing any of the games that they paid money to access?

Does that list include every good game of the last few years like you were suggesting before? Backtracking away!

More and more titles are choosing to use Steamworks, so this notion that it's somehow not a problem if you take Steams subscriber agreement as written (enacted means jack) then yes it's an issue. Last year a bunch of games big and small launched with Steamworks and likely a lot more will this year.

Does Origin even have an offline mode? I still complain about Steam's offline mode being wonky. But the fact that it's there and they should support it if I call them on it is more than someone else offers.

Bar a couple of titles with MP components (ME3 & BF3) you don't need Origin to be running to play them. I launch Sims from my desktop and B:AC similarly ran sans Origin. It's essentially a shop/installer.

What if it looks like a poor desparte little kid who can't form a coherent argument and has to fall back on the "Well you're a fanboy! So there!" cop-out, acts like like a poor desperate little kid who can't form a coherent argument and has to fall back on the "Well you're a fanboy! So there!" cop-out, and posts like a poor desperate little kid who can't form a coherent argument and has to fall back on the "Well you're a fanboy! So there!" cop-out?

Shooop. You've been hoisted by your own petard, get over it.

Yeah, no one has been banned with EA's EULA.

Year old news articles and Chinese whispers from other forums with out of context quotes? AFAIK no ones been permanently banned from Origin and frankly I don't care all that much if someone did, because what EA did/does or didn't do doesn't invalidate the very fact that Valve can do exactly the same at any given moment. I have games on Steam and I have games on Origin, I don't waste my life worrying about vague phantasms, of let them preclude me from doing what I enjoy in my free time, which is play games. Feel free to continue fearmongering and beating your chest about how you'll never ever buy an EA game ever.

I have games on Steam and I have games on Origin, I don't waste my life worrying about vague phantasms, of let them preclude me from doing what I enjoy in my free time, which is play games. Feel free to continue fearmongering and beating your chest about how you'll never ever buy an EA game ever.

This. I don't really give a damn. Do I have thousands of euros worth of games on Steam? Yes. Do I act so that I have to fear banning? No. Would I give a shit if they banned me anyway? Well, actually no. I may have hundreds of games there, but at any given time I'm likely to be playing only two or three of them. Occasionally I return to the older ones too, but if my library was banned from me it wouldn't be like "omg I lost my hundreds of games". It'd be more like "huh, can't play these three games now, guess I'll buy them from someone else and start using their service instead".

Not that I mind you saying that Steam's offline mode is unreliable now, but why the change of heart?

What change of heart? It was a poll I started to determine whether Offline worked or not for people at that point in time. Seems 20% of people still had issues. A 1 in 5 chance of Steam not working is hardly 'reliable' by any measure. Still feel free to claim it's me attempting to say there were no problems though Griz Vs establishing the likelihood.. If anyone is saying Steam Offline mode is reliable it's Shooop. How about taking it up with him?

This. I don't really give a damn. Do I have thousands of euros worth of games on Steam? Yes. Do I act so that I have to fear banning? No. Would I give a shit if they banned me anyway? Well, actually no. I may have hundreds of games there, but at any given time I'm likely to be playing only two or three of them. Occasionally I return to the older ones too, but if my library was banned from me it wouldn't be like "omg I lost my hundreds of games". It'd be more like "huh, can't play these three games now, guess I'll buy them from someone else and start using their service instead".

Well I think that's a problem, because you're not talking about an itty bitty violation of your consumer rights. This isn't some mild petty slight by a publisher blown way out of proportion by gamers trying to force their social beliefs on you. Instead you're talking about having hundreds of pounds/euros worth of merchandise snatched away in an instant. No big deal?

Nobody should have the power to take away my games, they should at least have to get past me and my shovel first.

Nobody should have the power to take away my games, they should at least have to get past me and my shovel first.

The law is pretty good on consumer rights. If EA, Valve or anyone suddenly took away access to your games without just cause then you'd be well within your rights to take issue with it through legal channels.